Archive for August, 2011

Every August for the last seven years some former Lehigh classmates and friends have headed out to Knoebel’s Amusement Park in Elysburg Pennsylvania. It’s no coincidence that Rick Knoebel was one of my fraternity brothers at Lehigh. His family owns and runs the park. Unfortunately having lived in California during most of that time we’ve never been able to go. (Yes, we were here last year, but there’s the little matter of the six-week-old baby demanding attention that kind of got in the way!)

There are a number of cabins right on the park grounds, and our crew took over three of them for the weekend. The Phoenix roller coaster was literally right outside our front door. (Luckily they don’t start running the coaster until about 10am.)

Jack was nice enough to order everyone these stylish orange t-shirts for us all to wear.

Actually, they were quite helpful in tracking down other members of the group in the park (and if we ever get stranded on a desert island we can use them to flag down the rescue helicopter.)

After driving up Friday night, we started the day out with a little breakfast, then headed into the park.

The first ride of the day – the teacups!

Of course we had to break for a little snack.

Then back onto the rides!

Rick took a few of us on a little behind the scenes tour of a couple of the newer rides that aren’t even open yet. The first was the Black Diamond, which is a combination roller coaster / haunted house meant to resemble a coal mining operation. It was fun to be able to walk around inside the building and go into the control room (you know, all those doors that say “Keep Out” and “Employees Only”). The ride wasn’t open to the public when we were there but they were hoping it would be just a couple more weeks.

Here are Jack and Mike taking the cars for a test drive:

Next we got to go walk the track at the Flying Turns ride. This is a ride like a bobsled/luge where the cars don’t actually ride on rails, but on wheels that just ride on the wooden planks. This was really cool because we got to walk all the way to the top on the track itself. This one they’re planning to open next year.

Here Rick demonstrates how the ride is going to work:

After a long day at the park, we headed back to cabins to relax and have some dinner. Here Jack and Mike demonstrate proper BBQ safety techniques. (“You’re only young once but you can stay immature forever”).

After dinner we had a little campfire so we could make the s’mores.

After Bryce went to bed, Sisi and Dada headed back into the park for a couple of last rides before the park closed. The carousel with it’s horses was her favorite.

Sadly the next day was rained out, and since we had two exhausted kids we headed home. But we had a great time while we were there. Thanks Rick for the tour, and thanks Jack for planning the whole event.